July 9 (UPI) — In a stark admission, a Ukrainian official has confirmed that Ukraine targeted the Kerch Strait Bridge connecting Crimea to Russia in October. Meanwhile, Russian officials in the Ukrainian province have reported that their air defenses successfully shot down a cruise missile near the bridge.
Anna Maliar, Ukraine’s deputy defense minister, made this revelation in a statement on Telegram, stating that it has been 273 days since Ukraine “initiated the first attack on the Crimean bridge to disrupt Russian logistics.”
While commemorating other achievements of the Ukrainian military on the 500th day of the unprovoked war, Maliar also celebrated the sinking of the Russian cruiser Moskva and the liberation of Snake Island in the Black Sea, which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited on Saturday.
Vladimir Rogov, the Russia-installed head of Crimea, declared in a statement on Telegram that traffic on the bridge was temporarily halted due to “an attempted attack by the Nazis.” It is worth noting that the Kremlin often refers to Ukrainians as Nazis as part of their war propaganda.
Rogov shared a video showing the apparent missile interception.
This acknowledgment from Maliar regarding the October explosion is the most definitive confirmation of Ukraine’s involvement in targeting Russia on what Russia considers its own territory.
The Kerch Strait Bridge was constructed by Russia after Crimea’s illegal annexation in 2014, leading up to the current war. The explosion of a truck on the bridge resulted in three casualties, a fire on a fuel-carrying freight train, and partial bridge collapse.
“We carried out certain measures based on the norms of our current legislation, as well as international customs and warfare traditions, considering the fact that it was an enemy logistics route that we were obligated to sever,” explained Vasyl Maliuk, the chief of the Security Service of Ukraine, in a documentary earlier this year.
Russian war bloggers criticized President Vladimir Putin for not publicly addressing the bridge damage and calling for retaliation after the October blast.
“The Russian Federation is being slapped on the cheek and its obediently open mouth spat into,” wrote one Russian blogger on Telegram at the time.
“There are no public responses to such outcomes because the Russian Federation is governed by traitors and degenerates. Degenerates and traitors.”
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